Some people say that we POSIX guys are biased. --Many believe that wee open source folks have something against commercial software platforms / tools.

In my case - as well as everyone else I know - nothing could be farther from the truth!

In very fact, while I personally do allot on free & open Linux / LAMP / POSIX worlds, when it comes to raking in the big bucks I - more often than not - find myself working with Microsoft technologies.

Indeed, we'll rake in ever more $$,$$$ when we combine POSIX, Microsoft, and other tools together (The higher the 'tech is stacked, the fewer there be to tackle it, my friends ...!)

Modern C/C++

While many marvelous tools have come and gone, at the time of this writing - and in my opinion - there are virtually NO decent open graphical tool sets for C/C++. --And I have tried just about all of them! (Conclusion: Never trust a developer - favoring ONE language - to concoct a language-savvy tooling ... for another?)

So as I turned my weary eyes back to Visual Studio this day, I was overjoyed to discover that "The Empire" has finally started to support those of us who - uh - like to live ... on "Hoth" ! (Cygwin and MinGW under Visual Studio? CLICK HERE!)

(Hey 'Darth: Say "CHEEESE?")

Indeed, after downloading Visual Studio's 2017 Community Edition so that I could play with libtcod (they no longer liked my '2013 Pro) I tell 'ya truly - that a relatively new editor - known as Visual Studio Code - works REAL WELL out of the box... even in our icy monster-caves:

Sure - when time for working on C# & VB comes again (as it always will!) I will surely upgrade the '2013 to VS 2017 -- or whatever else the emperor de-jure requires us to buy so as to continue to move our hostage-ware VS Projects (like libtcod!) forward in their empire.

In the mean time however, it is VERRRRY refreshing to be able to quickly do a 'git - edit - as well as work with the console tools directly from Visual Studio Code, Express, or the Community Editions!

Yet THAT - as we might say - and to complete the analogy - is merely the tip of this iceberg of what the entire VS Family-Empire can do for Modern C/C++! =)